Ingredients

Rudeness

Meanness

Kindness (Optional but recommended)

Protectiveness (Just a drop, any more could hurt you both) 

Step 1: Add meanness. Do it carelessly with a number two pencil and lined paper. 

It wouldn’t be your brother if it didn’t hurt at least a little—so you add in the meanness and rudeness in swaths, watching the ingredients splatter like blood droplets as they spill carelessly into the bowl.  

You could never forget when he handed you a birthday card four months late because he needed to “study” for his Spanish exam, even though he spent hours sketching cards for his friends. He tossed the piece of A4 lined paper on the table hastily with four lousy words scratched inside with a graphite pencil—Happy Birthday. Grow up. 

He didn’t even bother to get you a gift. 

“I got you a perfume,” he lied, throwing a delicate blue box towards you, “now get out of my room.”

“How am I supposed to believe that?” you said as he slammed the door, the wind stinging against your face. He didn’t care about your birthday, you thought. He didn’t care about you at all.

Remember that old camcorder video your dad took of you and your brother, back when you lived in the tiny apartment in Malaysia? You were only two, but your brother kept poking at your shoulder, making fun of your crooked teeth. The two of you were crammed in that small white crib, and you did the only thing two year olds knew how to do—cry. 

You couldn’t stop laughing at that video. He’d never give you a break, would he?

In a way, he has made you stronger. 

STEP 2: Add kindness (Optional but recommended). Drop a few specks delicately and stir, stir, stir.  

Let the speckles of sugar coalesce into the rudeness. If you stir enough, your brother becomes someone else— someone who cooks for you.

Once, he was cooking six pieces of French toast on the stove and you asked politely if you could have one.

“It’s all mine,” he teased, boisterously sweeping the plate into his hands and dropping a sizzling piece into his mouth, “Make them yourself, lazy.” 

When you came into the kitchen later, you found he’d left a slice on the dining table. The toast was cold from sitting out too long, but somehow your mouth burned with a newfound warmth as you took a bite. The hidden morsels of his affection tasted so comforting on your tongue.

STEP 3: Add Protectiveness. (Just a drop, any more could hurt you both). Pour it gently into the bowl. You don’t have a lot of this ingredient so please be careful not to spill any.

Your brother’s protectiveness catches you off-guard every time. A group of boys were towering over you at the edge of the playground, spitting bullets into your face, and you were nervous that no one would be there— but he always came. Your brother was the only one who could pick on you and tease you as much as he wanted but wouldn’t let anyone else lay a finger on you. 

You thought that he would stop protecting you as you grew up, but he never stopped standing by your side. When you traveled to Rome last summer, he was constantly looking back to see if you were behind him, yelling at you to “MOVE IT!” Then, he would pull your yellow backpack to drag you away from pickpockets so you could  catch up with your parents, who were already submerged in the bustling cobblestone streets of Italy.

Now, every time you travel he would warn you to “stop smiling at people like some dumb kid. You’re going to get kidnapped.”

This recipe is perfect because of its imperfections: every time he sends a flying kick your way, every door he shuts in your face, every forgotten gift and lousily written card left on the kitchen table. 

Your brother can be forgetful, hurtful and bothersome—but in every iteration, he’s flipping hot toast on the stove on Tuesday evenings, slicing an extra piece of bread for you and placing it next to a birthday card. It’s steaming yet comforting and all encompassing at once.